The difference between mainstream HIFI, budget seperates, midrange and high end?

Dave,

Just one question: have you ever experienced an optical illusion?

 

Yes, however, this is not the same thing. The differences are always present unless you have a poor rig or poor setup (conventionally or due to comparators or dodgy wiring in test rigs.)

 

On the contrary its just the start of it if you're interested in whats going on.

IME small tweaks can increase musical enjoyment several-fold.

 

Nothing wrong with it David, but I think you are probably enjoying the tweaking, not the music.

 

Tweaking is part of the hifi experience. Those who think they're only involved with the hobby for "the love of music" are fooling themselves.

 

There are many people who have good kit purely for the love of music. They don't post on a hi-fi forum about it.

 

Personally, I don't believe posting on a hifi forum is any measure of a person's love for music nor do I place any stock in the Holier Than Thou and elitist attitude of "it's all about the music." Folks who can't admit they're an audiophile probably have some very serious issues.

As far as hearing effects which can't be explained by current measurements. I'm unable to convince myself I'm delusional after years of trying. I suppose I'm doomed to continue enjoying the occasional imaginary improvement I make to my system.

 

So, you can accept that your cerebral cortex can be misled by sensory stimuli, but not by auditory stimuli?

 

Not at all. However, I do believe if I hear something consistently and the cause seems reasonable there's a damn good chance it's real.

 

So you accept that it is at least possible for your auditory sense to be deluding you?

 

Why can't it be a combination of the two?

 

Sure, as much a possibilty as an asteroid hitting Earth tomorrow and killing all life forms. In other words, possible but not likely in this case.

 

So, you'll readily agree that optical illusions can occur, but you think auditory illusions, or self-delusions, are vanishingly rare? Why is that? Why do you think the ears are so much more reliable than the eyes?

 

James,

I seriously doubt I'm having auditory illusions of any sort since everyone else in the real world hears the same upon audition.

regards,

dave

 

I just don't really see that a small tweak to your hi-fi can change your musical enjoyment. To my mind, tweaks by their nature are small differences, nothing big enough to change the enjoyment of the music. They only offer the fun of playing with your hi-fi.

 

Hi Dave,

I understand your position. But when subjective differences are claimed, which disappear under blinded conditions, and especially where there is no measurable difference, and no theoretical reason why there should be any difference in the first place, then the sceptical position seems sensible. It's a very odd stance to accept optical illusion as commonplace, but auditory illusion as rare.

I'm thinking about mains cable differences, and non-phono interconnects.

The subjectivist says "science doesn't know everything about cables", and that might possibly be true, but there is no reason to infer that science knows absolutely nothing about cables.

 

I'm frankly astonished you should make these comments with your background.

Doesn't room correction produce some impressive results?

 

Howdy bub,

I've never stated or inferred scientists know nothing about cables or audio design. Personally, I believe some engineers know alot more about cables and their audibilty in circuits than they'll ever let on about but do not discuss it in order to maintain the competitive edge. Unless you work in audio circuit design day in and day out and manage to design something better than most of the crap on the market, I suspect it's easy to fall back on the accepted wisdom from the past that only FR, IM and THD affect what we hear and mechanical devices are the only great variable when it comes to fidelity vs work your ass off in the lab and try and figure out why a few do achieve better sounding designs. If the case were "we know everything there is to know when it comes to audio", wouldn't you think there'd be one system, somewhere, that got reasonably close to reproducing the signal by now? None are within a million miles (and better speaker technology is not going to solve the problem alone.)

FWIW, I check and recheck everything a minimum of ten times (and usually a lot more) before I mention an adjustment or "tweak" on these forums. Hard to believe I'm sure but I've experienced changes with cables, etc which made either no difference or differences which could be traced to other causes. The last thing I'd want to do is mislead or cause another time or money chasing a something that will not work because it doesn't exist. As well, for the same reason, I rarely make recommendations for equipment or tweaks of any sort to Internet forum members since I can't be onsite to make sure my suggestions are audible with accurately replicated setups.

regards,

dave

 

I think the physics of electrical cables is known, for all practical purposes. There may be odd things happening in quantum mechanics which are counterintuitive and difficult to comprehend, but I doubt that it makes any difference to audio.

It depends what you mean by "reasonably close" and "a million miles". I think what we have now is actually very close, and I've often got up to answer the phone during plays / The Archers on Radio 4. Very annoying it is, too.

I think microphone technology at one end, and speaker technology at the other, is going to be where things improve in the future. I really don't think that nerding about with cables achieves anything at all, except at a psychological level.

The problem with this "we don't know everything there is to know" argument is that it opens up into "the god of the gaps" argument, and religion appears in the form of cable worship. We know how cables work, we know about the placebo effect, and we know that our brains can misinterpret sensory information.

So we can already explain why people think they hear cables making a difference without having to assume that the known properties of electrical cables are wrong or incomplete, and when the perceived difference disappears on blind testing, this confirms our theory.

 

I think one of the differences between, lets say mid-fi and hi-fi, is
'speed'.
I am reminded of a comment a hifi buddy made when he first played a Rega Planar 2 he recently found cheaply in a charity shop - "it sounded so SLOW!". (Oh and Martin would have given it a service to ensure it was doing its best..believe me).
He and I have been playing around with Rocks and TD124s for a while now and have got used to that level of performance I suppose without realising how far we have come.
I see there has been a discussion about 'whether we can believe our ears'...
Well, the senses are not infallible - that much we know - but we use our senses to negotiate many obstacles in day to day life with great success (eg driving a car, making love, cooking) so they must be pretty reliable in any ordinary senseof the term, or there would be loads of accidents, no or fewer children, and widespread hunger in surburbia.
That we can control a hifi system i.e., it is to all intents and purposes amenable to 'closure' as in a scientific experiment helps to make our sensory perceptions (in this case auditory) even more reliable because we can repeat the 'experiment'. So I am less likely to be fooled into thinking that, say, my Tabriz is better than my Rega arm with the Rondo Bronze on the TD124 because I can go back the next day, and the day after that, to repeat the playing of the same record, (the experiment) and, crucially (for objectivity) so can you in your home in order to verify the results.
If enough people do it who are technically adroit, (erm, hifi reviewers), ensuring the 'experiment' is 'set up'properly, and they report their findings truthfully (they are not corrupt) we are getting to a situation approaching objectivity where we can say there are findings rather than opinions.
I may be fooled once but not over and over again with a record collection I knowinside out over time..and if I have been fooled, there is the guy(s) sitting next to me to put it right.
The great Scottish philosopher David Hume argued that ALL we can know is what we can observe with our senses and gave birth to a movement in philosophy (and philosophy of science and social science, the subject area of my doctorate) called variously Empiricism, Positivism, and Social Positivism.
Leading on from Empiricism there was Karl Popper who argued that a statement can only be scientificif it was amenable to VERIFICATION - in laymans' terms 'prove it!'
I think I have shown that we in Hifi are in a reasonable position to do just that.